Although for decades on end alcoholism has been a
major blight on the health of the Hungarian population, few writers,
particularly during the period of the Communist hold on power, were
willing to tackle it honestly.

"I am not a pessimistic guy. If I was pessimistic, I would never even have started to make films. I hope that these films will be watched in twenty, thirty or forty years, and I think this is as optimistic as you can get in today’s world."

Writers and poets were intensively spied upon in the forty years of the
Kádár era. After his book on agents on the rock music scene, Tamás
Szőnyei has written a monumental study on informers who specialized in
literary life.